Hard-boiled detective fiction sets the scene for a cold and harsh reality. Dashiell Hammett’s, “The Girl with The Silver Eyes” is no exception to this rule. In this short story Hammett paints a picture of a brutally realistic urban center filled with characters that not many people would want to call friends. The realistic qualities of Hammett’s story are drawn from his own life’s experience working as a Pinkerton detective. The detective in “The Girl With The Silver Eyes” works for the Continental Detective Agency and is, therefore, known simply as the Continental Op. In the beginning of the story the Op professes, “a detective, if he is wise, takes pains to make and keep as many friends as possible among transfer company, express company and railroad employees” (27). This paper will examine this philosophy of the Continental Op, how he employs this approach to detective work and uncover if this approach is beneficial or disadvantageous.
The Continental Op is an unsympathetic character with a stickler attitude to his work. The Op believes that the case he is about to take is legitimate but states that, “I am only a hired man and have to go by the rules” (23). At the core of this statement is a man that is unwilling to bend the rules outlined by his company. People who always follow the rules are often seen as trust worthy and at the same time difficult to get along with. When you know a person is always going to go by the book, like the Op, it makes their actions predictably frustrating. Things could go a lot faster if a person were to cut a corner or two and help out. By doing this the detective might have made himself more likable to his new client. The Op shows no desire to perform this way to have friends on his side. T...
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... even if this means that he has to pay a few people to be his friends. Without the help of the girl at the Marquis Hotel the Op would not have been given that lead. If it were not for the help of Porky Grout over the past three years that the detective had employed him, who knows how many cases would have gone unsolved. Even though in the end things do not workout between Porky and the Continental Op and Porky meets his fate. It is clear that the Op’s philosophy about what it means to make and keep friends is different then what other people would describe. It is the strong moral code that the P.I. is constantly reinforcing that allows the case to come to a resolution. People may not like the Op and fortunately for the general public most people to not have the personality of the Continental Op. Fact is the detective solves the case and gets his women in the end.
Amateur City, a city filled with confusion and intolerable human behavior. In this detective fiction novel, Katherine Forrest demonstrates the social, sexual and power dynamic of each character which all leads to the curious homicide of Fergus Parker. In Forrest’s Amateur City there are multiple analysis regarding the characters of the “Modern Office” also including the detective Kate Delafield. Amateur City portrays a huge hierarchy of the predominant human society in which the class of race, ethnicity and gender are all divided in the image of Forrest’s characters. The social, sexual and power dynamic of the “Modern Office” provides a powerful message in Forrest’s Amateur City, which clearly magnifies the realistic and true nature of humanity. This essay will stress upon the representive of Forrest’s characters relating to the modern world.
These are not the only reasons for urgency to find a killer; the Solicitor General of Atlanta’s circuit, Hugh M. Dorsey, desperately needed a successful conviction because he had recently failed to convict two accused murderers. He was concerned about putting together a case that would hold up in court; no matter what lengths he had to go to in order to accomplish this. Overtime, it became obvious that Dorsey did not necessarily believe that Frank was guilty, but recognized that the political values of his position were uncertain.
The more notorious the case, the greater the number of prospective informant. They rush to testify like vultures to rotting flesh or sharks to blood. The are smooth and convincing liars(George Carlin, p.1).” Jailhouse informants are a major factor to convicting innocent people. Using informants makes an unjust and unfair trial. The Thomas Sophonow case used jailhouse informants to convict Sophonow of a crime he did not commit. Thomas was convicted of murdering Barbara Stoppel at the Ideal Donut Shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Thomas has a highly suspect and was brought to jail. Three informants claimed that Thomas has confessed to them that he had murdered Barbara. All three informants lied on the stands. Mr. McQuade who was one of the informants testified under duress. Two police officers had told him that if he did not testify against Thomas voluntarily, the Crown was going to exposed him of being an informant. Another informant was Mr. Cheng who was charged with 26 counts of fraud. He hoped if he testified against Thomas his charges were to be dropped and luckily for him they were. The last informant was Mr. Martin who was described as “a prime example of convincing mendacity of jailhouse informants. He seems to have heard more confessions than many dedicated priest(Sarah Harland-Logan, p.1).” There were other 11 informants who were eager to give false testimony
Until Part 3 of the book, "Answer," Capote's method emphasizes the mysterious, evasive nature of the crimes and their effects on the townsfolk of Holcomb, Kansas. Because he does not allow the author to speak in his own, first-person voice, Dewey's role is critical in that he acts as the central intelligence guiding our integration of plot elements. His motives and desires allow readers to identify with the eventual capture and punishment of the suspects. The confession scene promises to release pent-up curiosity about the crimes, which up to this point have been presented as motiveless and inexplicable. Our anticipation takes its cue from Dewey's solemn vow when first encountering the murder scene: "However long it takes, it may be the rest of my life, I'm going to know what happened in that house: the why and the who.'' (Truman Capote, 80) Here, we as readers are compelled to sympathize with Dewey in his quest to discover what monster(s) would commit such a crime.
It is very interesting to note how the conventions of 1940’s hardboiled private eye fiction translate into the 1970’s. The low-rent drabness of the genre loses much of its allure. The dark shadows and long nights of urban Los Angeles become the bright lights and warm sunshine of Malibu beaches. The detective’s normally snappy dialogue turns into joking asides. Marlowe’s hardboiled narration becomes the self-conscious mutterings of a lonely man talking to himself. The romantic myth of a man set apart from the city is turned on its head as a pathetic man living alone with his cat.
Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon, is a hard-boiled detective novel; a subset of the mystery genre. Before the appearance of this sub-genre, mystery novels were mainly dominated by unrealistic cases and detectives like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. As Malmgren states, “The murders in these stories are implausibly motivated, the plots completely artificial, and the characters pathetically two-dimensional, puppets and cardboard lovers, and paper mache villains and detectives of exquisite and impossible gentility.” (Malmgren, 371) On the other hand, Hammett tried to write realistic mystery fiction – the “hard-boiled” genre. In the Maltese Falcon, Hammett uses language, symbolism, and characterization to bring the story closer to reality.
Another powerful opinion yearning to be exposed, is the one held by Henry Drummond, the defense’s attorney. The lawyer undoubtedly came to d...
The criminal underworld has been an essential aspect of crime fiction since the concept emerged in the mid-eighteenth century. While many authors have constructed their own idealistic conceptualizations of the criminal underworld, they have implemented distinct boundaries between the “good” and “evil” features of society. These opposing “worlds” often intertwine when the protagonist, a crusader for good, is thrust into the hellscape of society’s underworld. The novels A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson feature protagonists from differing backgrounds who embark on treacherous journeys through the criminal underworld.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” utilize character responsibilities to create a sinister plot. For Hawthorne, protagonist Young Goodman Brown must leave his wife at home while he partakes in a night journey. For Poe, ancillary Fortunato covets a pretentious manner towards his wine tasting skills, and after being ‘challenged’ decides to prove his expertise by sampling Amontillado. Hawthorne and Poe showcase a theme of darkness but differ in their approach to the setting, characters, and fate of entrapment.
The story line of Red Harvest is riddled with double-crossing characters, bootleggers and crooked authority figures that obviously challenge universal moral codes of conduct. More importantly, some characters remain more morally ambivalent then others. Although, this is a troupe of hardboiled detective novels from the time, and the Film Noir genre where nothing is as it seems, there are particular characters and events that stand out. The language and situations are so double sided that the reader is forced to question the weave of their own moral fabric. Dashiell Hammett through his writing style is able to reflect on the concerns many had at the time regarding rise in crime and deterioration of Victorian age morals, coincided with the rise of the detective Anti-hero, guilty woman (femme fatal) and vigilantism.
Dick presents our main character, Commissioner John Anderton, as the balding, pot-bellied founder of a revolutionary new crime detection system who's been showing his years for longer than he'd care to remember. In the short story, he has just acquired a new assistant, Ed Witwer, and fears being replaced by the younger man. In the beginning, Anderton is portrayed as slightly insecure about his job (to the point of near paranoia of being set-up), as well as his importance to society, though by the e...
Because police investigators are usually under pressure to arrest criminals and safeguard the community, they often make mistakes. Sometimes, detectives become convinced of a suspect 's guilt because of their criminal history or weak speculations. Once they are convinced, they are less likely to consider alternative possibilities. They overlook some important exculpatory evidence, make weak speculations and look only for links that connect a suspect to a crime, especially if the suspect has a previous criminal record. Picking Cotton provides an understanding of some common errors of the police investigation process. During Ronald Cottons interrogation, the detectives did not bother to record the conversation “But I noticed he wasn 't recording the conversation, so I felt that he could be writing anything down”(79) unlike they did for Jennifer. They had already labelled Ronald Cotton as the perpetrator and they told him during the interrogation “Cotton, Jennifer Thompson already identified you. We know it was you”(82). Jenifer Thompson 's testimony along with Ronald Cotton 's past criminal records gave the detectives more reason to believe Ronald committed the crime. Ronald Cotton stated “ This cop Sully, though, he had already decided I was guilty.”(84). Many investigative process have shortcomings and are breached because the officials in charge make
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, both tell the same story about a man who is lonely and blames the world around him for his loneliness. The characters of Underground Man and Travis Bickle mirror each other; they both live in the underground, narrating their respective stories, experiencing aches and maladies which they leave unchecked, seeing the city they live in as a modern-day hell filled with the fake and corrupt. However, time and again both Travis and the Underground Man contradict their own selves. While the underground character preaches his contempt for civilization—the ‘aboveground’—and the people within it, he constantly displays a deep-seeded longing to be a part of it. Both characters believe in a strong ideal that challenges that of the city’s, an ideal that is personified in the character of the prostitute. He constantly attempts to seek out revenge, but the concept of revenge, paired with the underground character’s actions and inertia, becomes problematic with the underground ideal. The underground character is steeped in contradiction, and how one interprets his actions, or his inactions, is what ultimately determines whether the he is, truly, an underground man.
Rachel, J.R. (2002). Andragogy’s Detectives: A critique of the Present and a Proposal for the Future. Adult Education Quarterly. 52(3). 210.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was first published in 1926, and is one of many of Christie’s Hercule Poirot Mystery novels. In this novel, we obtain a deeper understanding of the impact social standings has and the influence it has on how people perceive you. The mystery takes place in an era where social class was extremely divided, and it is shown throughout the novel how a character’s social class can hinder or help. Even when the characters are faced with a crime, and the person who did it is unknown, social class still plays a magnificent role in unraveling the explanation of who would have committed something as dreadful as murdering a man. The Murder of Roger